On Tuesday 26th October, Ian Ridpath spoke at ‘Skeptics In the Pub’ in Cambridge on the subject of UFOs and common misinterpretations that lead to their being assigned as extraterrestrial. His talk was fantastically successful: the room was rammed, and every feedback form that we received said that the speaker was excellent. While Ian shot to fame over 30 years ago following his investigation and explanation that the Rendlesham Forest incident was not extraterrestrial in origin (his evidence on which I felt was both compelling and complete), on Tuesday he provided up-to-date and relevant examples – quite a contrast to Nick Pope’s beliefs that Ian’s arguments are wide of the mark!

‘Skeptics In The Pub’ is not limited to skeptics; all are welcome to attend. So for me, the real success of the evening was that we had a true believer in the crowd, whom I will call “Steve” as I did not catch his real name. When the crowd was asked at the start if anyone in the audience is a believer, Steve made himself known and sat patiently throughout the entire talk. During the break, he spoke politely to my co-organisers and explained that he had large misgivings about Ian’s theories. He behaved exactly as a civilised person should, despite his contrasting views, and that is something I both appreciate and respect.

The Question & Answer session at the end of the talk provided Steve with an opportunity to voice his views on the subject. (Please be aware that I am writing from memory rather than notes.) His linchpins were firstly the Disclosure Project; and secondly sightings of TR-3B, stating that his friends and family had told him that they worked on UFO-related technologies in the United States. Ian responded that he felt that the Disclosure Project was doomed to failure, but with regard to the latter there was little that he could comment on without evidence from either side.

Steve voiced that Ian’s dismissal of the Disclosure Project was insulting to those behind it and many people were facing jail for what they had said. He unfortunately did not elaborate on this; however, Ian provided the names Sgt Clifford Stone and Gary McKinnon. From his comments, Ian obviously thinks little of Sgt Stone, and I will leave you to investigate him if you wish to find out why this may be the case. Gary McKinnon, who was accused of hacking into the United States military and NASA computers between February 2001 and March 2002, is of course an interesting character, but while it has been established that he did break into the military systems, he has no evidence to show for his troubles.

One interesting and sound point about the Rendlesham Forest incident that Steve made, and that had not been mentioned up to this point during the course of the evening, was that four keys witnesses had visited the landing sight, had seen a craft, and had made a note of the symbols that were on the side of the said craft. Ian responded that there was only one witness, not four, who had claimed that these events had occurred. Also, the notebook detailing the symbols only came to light within the last five years, some 25 years after the incident occurred. He continued that the dates and times in the notebook did not correspond with the witness’s statement (although the witness himself claims this is not true). Ian therefore felt it was reasonable to dismiss this evidence. (As a further point, when I drove Ian to the train station later that evening, he elaborated that the witness claimed the ship was not an alien craft; that he had received messages telepathically, telling him it was actually a ship from the future searching for human DNA, sent to solve their failing gene pool. Interestingly, Ian suggested that this is often overlooked by those who seek UFO evidence.)

During his talk, Ian also mentioned and showed footage of the Phoenix Lights, which he claimed are in fact the result of flares on parachutes used by the military to light up the ground in the dark. Records of the dates, times and locations of these flares being dropped correspond with those of reported sightings. Steve, however, stated that evidence suggests it was laser light, not that of flames. The respectful nodding and polite disagreement from Ian up to this point quickly changed to an adamant disagreement. It took a while for the audience, who were unaware of this theory, to catch up. Once Steve confirmed that the spectroscopic analysis was carried out using a recording, the audience tried to explain the flaws of this method: film or digital recordings do not capture the whole spectrum and instead only record how it is made up from primary colours. This problem is confounded by the fact that television screens only display images in terms of red, green and blue. An example of this problem would be a yellow sodium streetlamp: a recording of it would show it as a mixture of red and green (which, due to limitations in the human eye, is indistinguishable from the actual streetlamp), while spectroscopic analysis of the streetlamp would show just two sharp lines of colour at two different frequencies of yellowish light. There is also the additional problem that laser light has a general property of coherence, which is not replicated in video recording and is also lost over the distances at which the recording is taken. It was at this point that Steve agreeably took his seat at my request, to allow other attendees to ask their questions to Ian. While he was obviously very frustrated and in strong disagreement with the speaker, he never lost his temper, and to this I give him credit.

Unfortunately, due to time constraints, Steve was not able to finish voicing his viewpoints and opinions. I, for one, believe we need to listen to and discuss a variety of topics such as this when someone is bold enough to attend a Skeptic event. I agree it is frustrating, but personally I have an interest in gaining a deeper insight into and understanding of what people think and why they believe what they do. (Hence, I was disappointed on leaving the venue that another attendee said ‘Thank you for shutting that idiot up’. I never intended to ‘shut anyone up’, rather I just wanted to give everyone a fair chance to ask questions.) I have therefore invited him to submit a talk for Soapbox In The Pub on 8th February 2011, to which I hope many of you will attend, and I hope that if Steve does take up my offer then it is an experience he will find useful.

If you are interested in applying to give one of several 15 minute talks yourself, please do contact me. Details can be found on the Soapbox In The Pub website.

Note: I’ve tried to make this as unbiased as possible and not to present either side’s arguments in too much detail. I would be very interested to read about your own experiences, and hope that you will add them to the comments.